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Viral Video Chart - Heroic Cats, Watch Dogs and Scary Clowns

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By VAN Team | VAN

May 21, 2014 | 4 min read

Brand Chart

After a recent spate of trending videos from brands gearing up to the World Cup, such as Winner Stays by Nike & Now Is What You Make It by Pepsi, all stuffed to the brim with appearances from football legends, you have to wonder if these players actually have any time left to get on the pitch and play any football!

This latest offering comes from Samsung (created by Cheil Worldwide & Psyop), featuring 11 of the world’s best players including Messi, Rooney & Ronaldo, using the Galaxy S5 to help them train for the biggest game of their lives, and the fate of mankind! This ad teases the Striker Soccer G11 mobile game & undoubtedly more videos yet to come, with the story set to unfold into the most important alien vs. human sports match since Space Jam!

Trending elsewhere this week is Ubisoft and their Amazing Street Hack video (from agency BETC Paris). Jumping on the trend of hidden camera setups & prankvertising, unsuspecting members of the public are given a little taste of what to expect from the upcoming video game Watch Dogs, after a trip to the local phone shop goes awry! Cue awesome choreographed car crashes & exploding street lamps!Watch Dogs itself is set to be released later this month, with Ubisoft claiming that it’s the most pre-ordered new IP in the history of the company, and in the entire video game business this year - no doubt justifying what must have been a pretty generous spend in the creation of this video!

UGC & Entertainment Chart Over in the world of UGC & entertainment, our preconceived opinions of cats & dogs (lazy & self-centred vs. man’s best friend) have been flipped on their head after a young child is saved from a vicious dog attack by his daring feline friend.Not often can one associate the word ‘heroic’ with the actions of a cat – cute, adorable, funny – yes – but heroic? Not so often! So lets all raise a glass of milk to the plucky little furball!Thankfully, the young boy is on the mend and has been reunited with his pet protector!

Also trending this week is yet another prank video, this time playing on the fears of many terrified children & adults alike – clowns! Coulrophobia, as it’s known, is no laughing matter to plenty of people, but you don’t need a phobia to run screaming from the character in these pranks, as he channels Pennywise from Stephen King’s ‘It’, shocking passers by with his sinister deeds.DMPranksProductions, who were behind the video, are no strangers to “social experiments & extreme scare pranks”, but this video does raise the questions of where to draw the line with these types of tricks. Is it ok to deceive people into believing they’ve witnessed a psycho killer in action? It’s all very well to reveal the secret at the end, letting people know that they’ve been fooled (which is what we hope happened in this case!), but is it just a matter of time before a prank like this goes too far?Can’t sleep, clowns will eat me. Can’t sleep, clowns will eat me…

Squeak Of The WeekAfter ‘My Cat Saved My Son’ it’s nice to see the softer, more gentle, side of dogs getting some exposure, when the Beagle Freedom Project rescue 9 dogs from a science lab in Nevada. The moment these poor pooches are given their freedom is enough to make your heart melt, and watching their furiously wagging tails as they begin their new journey is sure to leave you feeling warm & fuzzy!

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